This
Journal

January
2000

10. Angular Day

Thoroughly Monday today. I woke later than recommended after a not-sleepless night of weird dreamoids, the last of which launched me cock-eyed and unreal into my day. Outside the faculty room Brian gets my attention. I'm out of it. "Pretty tough commute this morning?" jests he of the really bad one. "You bet - the toughest." So I stumble down to homeroom after a close encounter with my old buddy Bright Aluminum Centerpost at the end of the main hall, and then it's period B - Sophomores.

It's a Writing Day. Time for a freewrite, which I have recently dubbed PowerWrite - ten minutes of uninterrupted scribbling. Here's mine:

this morning we never wake up we just pretend to be a part of the world going on but we are still caught in the wild dream of getting sliced up taken apart there on the conveyor belt every part of me being pulled out disassembled and there I am watching it all going through this process and thinking well here I am and see it doesn't hurt at all but it is kind of weird weird and wild too fast too much quick-cutting you get dizzy in your dream and wake up dizzy and there's the cat right beside you asleep and its too dark to see the clock but you stare at the black ceiling remembering how vividly you were coming apart at the hands of the others on the disassembly line I'll remember this you tell yourself I'll remember this unusual disorienting dream but now I find it fading away - except I remember one of their faces it was a dirty angular sad vaguely Asian face looking down at me in this condition

Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe big creepy dreams are like earthquakes, the product of accumulated tension suddenly released, suddenly all there instantly, defying language and memory. Do you remember the Wizard of Oz? That scene with the Scarecrow being re-stuffed on the conveyor belt? Or his description of how the flying monkeys tore him apart? "That's me all over." Well, my dream wasn't like that. It was darker, like some NIN video I've never seen.

Maybe it was that second cup of coffee last night. Maybe it was that novel. I like to read a bit before lights out, so I picked up this YA book called When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. Simple tale of a smalltown boy's tough sweet sad summer. I didn't intend to finish it last night, but it kept me going even after I started to fade. A very good book to do that. So I was up till a bit after midnight and then The Tallis Scholars chanted me to dreamland.

When I woke up I remember thinking that the cat was dreaming too because she was out cold and her paws were doing this little kittycat dream thing and she was squeaking. Maybe she was still stuck on that conveyor belt.

{Smartypants}

One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
Jean Cocteau

What did you dream last night?

Previous

This Journal

Home/School Stuff/Spiritual Stuff/Serious Stuff/Stupid Stuff/Rumors/Writing/Chronic Relations/Friends